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The extraordinary
and enigmatic art
of Niki de Saint-Phalle
Ramon Balius i Juli
On one of the terraces of the
Olympic Museum in Lausanne there is a
sculpture of two footballers playing on
the grass. One is white and the other
black, and they are both wearing
different coloured kits. One is lying
down in a defensive position while the
other is standing up and attacking.
There is also a white ball with a red
geometric design between the two of
them. This project called The Footballers
(acrylic on polyester resin, [1993]) is a
unique work of art, produced by the
artist Niki de Saint-Phalle, a sportsthemed creation that introduces our
discussion about the rich and varied life
Figure 1
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and artistic career of this enigmatic
woman and her extraordinary creations.
Catherine Marie-Agnès de SaintPhalle was born on 29 October 1930 in
Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, where her
American family, who were bankers by
profession, found themselves following
the financial ruin caused by the Great
Depression at the end of the 1920s. She
lived with her paternal grandparents for
3 years until she returned to Greenwich,
Connectitut, with her parents in 1933.
She began her education and artistic
training in New York, where she lived
until 1951. From 1937 onwards she was
known as Niki de Saint-Phalle. During
The Footballers, large-scale (1994).
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Figure 2
Niki de Saint-Phalle.
Shooting (1961).
this period she graduated from Oldfield
School, worked as a fashion model,
appearing in magazines like Vogue,
Harper’s Bazaar and on the cover of Life
magazine, and painted her first oil and
gouache paintings in a style that was
surrealist and completely self-taught.
Meanwhile, in 1948 she married Harry
Mathews, a music student at Harvard.
After her daughter Laura was born in
Boston in 1951, the couple moved to
Paris where Harry continued to work as
a musician and Saint-Phalle studied
drama. In the early fifties they made
several trips around the south of France,
Spain and Italy.
1955 was a crucial year both in terms
of Saint-Phalle’s personal life and her
artistic development. Her son Philip was
born. She visited Madrid and Barcelona
where she discovered the work of
Antonio Gaudí. She later went on to
explain that after she visited Park Güell,
created by the Catalan artist, she felt the
need to create “her own garden”, which
is something that she finally managed to
do twenty four years later. She met Jean
Tinguely (Fribourg, 1925-Berne 1991),
a sculptor famous for his mechanistic
constructions, and soon they began to
Figure 3
Shooting painting
(1961).
work together. She frequently visited the
Louvre and studied the works of Paul
Klee, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and
Henri Rousseau. She was deeply
impressed by Le Palais Idéal in
Hauterives, by Ferdinand Cheval
(Chaines, 1836-Hauterives, 1924.)
Cheval, who was known as le facteur
[the postman], built the palace by
himself between 1879 and 1905. He
had been inspired by ideas from books
and dreams and used stones and other
materials he found on his daily rounds.
Once his creation was finished, Cheval
devoted his final years to building his
own tomb. Her varied life experiences,
coupled with her infantile and
extravagantly feminine perspective,
formed the basis of her enigmatic,
intuitive, unique, obscure, and, at times,
delirious works of art.
She divorced her husband in 1960
and began experimenting artistically,
transforming herself into a “professional
artist”. In 1961 she worked on different
plaster nudes, including the Vénus de
Milo, in which she placed plastic bags
full of paint. She then destroyed her
Figure 4
Shooting painting
(1961).
creation by firing at it and letting the
contents of the broken bags leak all over
the white plaster, creating a bleeding
effect. Her shooting paintings were
famous and involved embedding plastic
pockets of different coloured paints
arranged on a canvas in plaster, which
Saint-Phalle and her invited collaborators
would then shoot at. When the paint
began to leak out, it produced amazing
and varied colourful effects on the white
surface. The shooting paintings gained
her access to the Nouveaux Réalistes, a
group that included Pierre Restany,
Arman, César, Christo, Gérard
Deschamps, François Dufrêne, Raymond
Hains, Yves Klein, Martial Raysse,
Mimmo Rotella, Daniel Spoerri, Jean
Tinguely and Jacques de la Villeglé.
She then moved on from the shooting
paintings to producing the assemblages
in the form of pagan alters that included
contradictory objects like revolvers, rats,
dinosaurs and even crucifixes.
The Nanas appeared in 1965,
inspired by an academic drawing by
Larry Rivers of his pregnant wife. These
Nanas were voluptuous large women
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Figure 5
Nana,
small-scale
(1999).
with generous curves, hand painted in
bright colours. At the beginning they
were made with wool and paper mâché,
but later Saint-Phalle began to
experiment with polyester resin and
even inflatable material. By using
polyester resin it was possible to paint
colourful, decorative motifs on the
Figure 8
Stravinsky fountain
(1982).
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Figure 6
Nana,
large-scale
(Hannover, 1974).
figures. However, polyester gives off
toxic gases that in some cases can kill,
and although Saint-Phalle knew that
this material could be fatal, she continued
to use it throughout her whole life. The
figures were of different sizes, some were
very large, like the one in Hanover, and
even gigantic, like the one in the
Figure 9
Stravinsky fountain (1982).
Figure 7
The Skaters,
medium-scale
(1975).
Moderna Museet in Stockholm (28
metres long, 9 metres wide and 6 metres
high) called Hon (“She” in Swedish.)
The latter, a sculpture that the spectator
could walk through, received 100,000
visitors who passed though its vaginal
canal and across the whole of its stomach
before it was destroyed 3 months later.
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Inside this meganana there was a “milk
bar”, a small cinema, a planetarium, an
aquarium and an art gallery full of copies
of modern works of art.
Niki de Saint-Phalle created several
works with Jean Tinguely, who she
married in 1971. She incorporated the
Swiss sculptor’s ingenious mechanical
elements in her sculptures and gave
them the power of movement. Good
examples of this are: a work called The
Skaters (acrylic on resin, on a plinth by
Tinguely, 1975); the set and costumes
for the Roland Petit ballet Eloge de la
Folie in 1966; Le Paradis Fantastique for
the French pavilion at Expo’67 in
Montreal, that included 9 paintings by
Saint-Phalle and 6 kinetic works of art
by Tinguely; the Stravinsky Fountain,
that included 16 sculptures inspired by
the music of the composer and was
located next to the Pompidou Centre in
1982; La fontaine Château-Chinon in
1988; and Espace Jean Tinguely - Niki de
Saint-Phalle, in Fribourg, the birthplace
of the Swiss artist.
In 1983, the Stuart Foundation
commissioned the Sun God for the
University of San Diego in California.
This was the first large outdoor work
done by Saint-Phalle in America. This
creation which subsequently became the
symbol for the UCSD was a huge bird
Figure 11
Tarot Garden.
The Empress (1998).
painted with bold shapes and vivid
colours. It was 36 metres high and stood
on top of a 45 foot concrete arc (now
covered in ivy.) The architectural
structure for children created in
Rabinovich Park in Jerusalem, inspired
by the story of Noah’s Arc, is also very
interesting.
Niki de Saint-Phalle collaborated
artistically in different films. She joined
the fight against AIDS and collaborated
on an animated film by her son Philip,
based on a book by the artist herself
entitled: AIDS: You can’t catch it holding
hands, which was published by the
Agence Française de lutte contre le sida
and distributed to all the schools in the
country.
In 1982 an American company
invited Niki de Saint-Phalle to create a
new perfume (Perfume 4 You.) It was a
success and allowed her to finance her
dream that started in Park Güell in
Barcelona: her Tarot Garden. At the time
she said “I have found both my master
and my destiny.” It took over 10 years to
Figure 12
Tarot Garden.
The wheel of fortune
(1998).
Figure 10
Sun God. University
of San Diego (1983).
build (it was opened in 1998), and is
situated on a small mountain near
Garaviccio, a small coastal town in
Tuscany. It is a huge garden with 22
colossal house-figures based on the
Tarot’s major arcana. The sculptures are
inspired by the world of fantasy and
sensual, rounded shapes. They are
covered with drawings and fragments of
mirrors, glass and brightly coloured
ceramic mosaics, similar to Gaudi’s
Figure 13
Tarot Garden. Mosaics
(1998).
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Figure 14
Golfer.
Nice (2002).
“trencadís”. For several years, Saint-Phalle
lived in one of these outrageous
constructions (called the Empress),
stating that she was “the mother inside
the mother.” The Tarot Garden is
surrounded by wild plantlife and rocks
and was described by Simon Vernon as
“the largest sculpture garden after
Gaudi’s.” This work probably symbolises
the peak of this enigmatic and hugely
imaginative woman’s artistic career.
In 1996 Saint-Phalle began building
Gila in San Diego, a play house for
children, which may be also inspired by
Gaudí and shaped like a dragon that was
3.63 metres high, 9 metres long and
covered in a mosaic of mirrors, stones
and ceramic pieces. Interestingly, she
used a computer programme to create
this monumental work.
In 1998 she produced a series of
sculptures called Black heroes that
included famous African Americans like
Michael Jordan, Joséphine Baker and
Louis Amstrong, and was dedicated to
their mixed-race grandchildren.
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Figure 15
Baseball player.
Nice (2002).
In 2001, Saint-Phalle donated a
significant number of her creations to the
city of Nice. She organised a large
retrospective exhibition at the Musée
d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain in
Nice, that ran from 17 March to 27
October 2002. During this period many
monumental sculptures inspired by jazz
Figure 17
Loch Ness Monster (1993).
Figure 16
Basketball players.
Nice (2002).
musicians, sportsmen and totems were
exhibited in the streets of the city. One of
these, the Loch Ness Monster that let out
an endless stream of water from its jaws,
was permanently placed in front of the
museum in a square named after the
artist herself. However, as a result of her
continued use of polyester the artist began
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to suffer from severe respiratory problems
and died in San Diego on 21 May of that
same year from severe emphysema.
Niki de Saint-Phalle was undoubtedly
an extraordinary and enigmatic artist
whose ingenuity and imagination knew
no bounds.
Useful Information
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niki_de_
Saint_Phalle
http //stuartcollection.edu/phalle/index.
html
h t t p . / / w w w. s p i e g e l . d e / k u l t u r /
gesellschaft/0,1518,113673,00.html
http://mosaicartsource.wordpresss.com/
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